Stranger than fiction? The ethical insights of energy utopias

Abstract

Recent energy-related narrative research spans from the analysis of individual narratives of energy users (Gordon 2018, Muller 2018) to the national visions of energy pathways (Durdovic 2022, etc). These results suggest that narratives, especially future-oriented narratives, can supplement and even enhance political willpower and socio-technological imaginaries. However, the impact of fictional utopian and dystopian energy narratives remains unclear. Therefore, in this essay, I analyze the energy systems and social orders represented in Ursula Le Guin’s Dispossessed (1974), Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975), and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry for the Future (2021). As climate fiction (or “cli-fi”), these three novels narrate the transformation that occurs when a society threatened by ecological collapse is re-engineered; for researchers, they open questions about the ethics undergirding our commitment to a fair, just, and efficient transition.